Should Hotels Stop Selling Porn?

Hotel porn may be a dying stream of revenue for hotel operators, but it's still a headline maker.

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Two professors from different faiths — a Muslim and a Christian — issued a letter to the hotel industry last week and asked hotels to stop selling pay-per-view porn.

It's not clear what exactly prompted the letter, given a growing number of travelers carry their own porn (and other content) with them instead of paying big bucks for a pay-per-view title that they can't expense to their company. Furthermore, in January 2011, Hotel Check-In broke news that Marriott is phasing out pay-per-view porn offerings as it shifts to newer entertainment platforms and porn-title revenues dry up.

Some excerpts from the letter, written by by Robert George and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf:

"We write to ask you to stop offering pornographic movies in your company's hotels. We make no proposal here to limit your legal freedom, nor do we threaten protests, boycotts, or anything of the sort. We simply ask you to do what is right as a matter of conscience.

We urge you to do away with pornography in your hotels because it is morally wrong to seek to profit from the suffering, degradation, or corruption of others. You are placing temptation in their path – temptation for the sake of profit. That is unjust. Moreover, the fact that something is chosen freely does not make it right."

AVN.com, which covers the adult entertainment industry, ran a piece about the letter that called the letter's arguments "horse#$@&."

"Their only concern is to control American citizens' sexuality in whatever form that may take, whether it's nudists bathing on a public beach or keeping people from hearing "dirty words" on radio..."

Hotel Check-In noticed this morning that the story's gradually spreading across the blogosphere.

This morning, London's Daily Mail picked it up and last night, CNN's religion blog ran it under the headline "Strange bedfellows unite for letter against porn."

Impact of letter?

CNN quotes Craig Gross, a pastor and the founder of XXXchurch.com, as saying the letter's an empty gesture with no power behind it.

"It has got to be one of the dumbest letters I have ever read," Gross told CNN. "It is like asking the Internet to stop selling porn. It sounds good and all, but it isn't going to happen."